GF: "Well where does that leave me? You are already covering the rent until I find a job, and so now my only contribution will be keeping the house clean. I am a woman and therefore my purpose is to serve you, and you are preventing me from fulfilling this purpose."

RC: exactly baby, now you be a good woman and serve your man how I ask you to, not how you want to.

I've lived with my Japanese girlfriend here in southern Osaka for a little over two years now, and there was a little resistance at first to some of the changes that eating in accordance with primal principles, but over time she learned that the changes really weren't as big as they first sounded, and that if she really must have rice she's free to make and eat it herself.

It means no udon, ramen, somen or other common noodley fare, but there are always rice noodles, harusame, marune (kuzu-kiri), or ito-konnyaku to replace them when you want something like that.

Rice is fine, but empty and worthless nutritionally. Having it now and then in dishes like sushi, chirashi-zushi, or fried rice, or with eel or other foods typically served with rice is fine -- just reduce the portion a bit. In everyday meals, if you really must have something carby, Japanese sweet potatoes are fantastic; as is kabocha, satoimo, and regular potatoes.

The sweet dishes that use a lot of sugar really aren't very traditional at all -- until very recently table sugar was a relatively expensive and uncommon ingredient. You don't need the sugar for any Japanese food -- her tastes are just spoiled by how sweet most prepared foods are in Japan; we use sugar in nothing and only rarely use mirin to add a bright touch to certain dishes, but sake often works just as well.

Breaded and battered foods are mostly out, but you can make kara-age with starch (katakuriko), ton-katsu with grated coconut, kaki-fry with rice flour, and so on.

Salad oil is garbage; you can get refined coconut oil (baguio) on rakuten cheap and should be able to get her to switch to that at least with little to no resistance. Or just use the lard that renders out of the pork when you cook stirfries instead of extra oil.

She's making a mountain out of a molehill unless she's a real sugar addict, or isn't actually all that fond of traditional Japanese meals made from scratch; what her grandparents or great grandparents ate; probably not what her mom cooks (in most cases).

Thanks Faumdano for sharing your experience, and good to hear that your girlfriend is onboard.

It sounds like you are giving the green light to some foods that I would personally consider NG (eg katakuriko, rice flour, noodles). I'll try controlling the portions a little but I was wondering how it is working out for you in terms of results. Also, what about rice? Do you have this with every meal?

The sugar is the main one I'm concerned about. It's in everything over here - sauces, tamago makiyaki, etc. Out of interest I checked the label of the pre-ground salt-and-pepper shaker the other day and sure enough sugar was one of the ingredients (?!). It's in the bin now, btw.

You're right about the salad oil being garbage, which she used to drown her salads in. I weened her off that by purchasing a set of these gourmet oils (macadamia, olive, avocado, etc) and so she is enjoying experimenting with these.

katakuriko and rice flour are rare (as in once every 2-3 months) and only for dishes that just don't work without something to act as a batter of sorts. Harusame is a little more common; maybe once a month in Chinese style chicken soups made from homemade chicken stock. Kuzukiri (made from kudzu starch) in the winter in nabe dishes maybe once a month; usually we use ito-konnyaku instead. As for noodles in the true sense of the word, we eat none. Maybe some 100% soba flour soba noodles on new years eve, but that's about it.

As for sugar being in everything: yes. We buy almost nothing that comes in a package except some very fundamental basics: miso, sake, soy sauce, vinegar, mustard, mirin, tobanjan. All of them we buy as sugar and additive free as possible. For example, our miso consists of: rice, soy beans, sake, salt. We buy no "osozai", no package curries or the like; everything is from scratch everyday, and you know what? It's not much effort at all; hell we even make our own yoghurt, natto, saurkraut and nuka pickles.

Rice we have maybe once a month on average as a treat for her mostly (I love it too); usually in a fried rice breakfast (takana chahan), again, made from scratch. We do have some sweet potato, squash, taro, or regular potato a few times a week depending on availability and in what quantity we made it.

As for results, we're doing this for health more than anything. Neither of us are overweight (I'm perhaps a little on the skinny side despite stuffing my face), and the girlfriend is pleasantly curvy (don't know how else to describe it... not skin and bones like a lot of Japanese women aspire to, but definitely not chubby). Unfortunately, our critical weakness is exercise -- we both really need to find a way to keep ourselves motivated to exercise. It's what we both need to go from simply healthy and fit to the next level.

Primal (to the 80% or 90% level) in Japan is quite easy to accomplish; maybe even more so than back in NA or elsewhere. However, that last 10% is almost impossible due to the huge uncertainties with respect to food sourcing: is it grass fed? pastured? organic? Good luck getting that info. Thankfully most vegetable and livestock farming is done on a much smaller scale here -- I personally trust even average domestic stuff here a lot more than I would factory farmed stuff back in NA.

OP, sounds like you are being a bit over-critical on the sugar and rice. Sugar is a great example of 80/20 - in small doses, like you'd get in a Japanese sauce or soup ingredient, there is no evidence whatsoever that it's harmful. It's in large doses, like a can of soda, that it is harmful because of limits on how the liver is able to process sugar. I'll almost guarantee that giving up yakiniku sauces, mirin, and that kind of building block of Japanese cuisine is going to do nothing for your health and make it a lot harder for GF to cook. Same with rice - if it's at every single meal and you are trying to lose weight, yeah, that's a lot of carb. But three or four times per week in combination with an active lifestyle is truly not going to hurt a thing. The only real knock on rice is that it's empty calories, which means it is not actively bad for you but instead just "not good" for you.

That is just about the most unattractive thing ever to me in a partner. I am a strong-willed and opinionated person, and I have zero interest in being with someone who behaves like a doormat. It's bad for them, and it's really bad for me.

I'd be pissed if someone expected me to behave that way, and I have no desire to have my spouse act that way either.

How to keep me happy? Enjoy interesting debates, be ready to explore and be curious about the world, make me laugh a lot, and kiss me often. Pull your weight and I'll pull mine.

Also, good sex helps. A lot.

I find all this battle of the sexes crap completely bewildering. Why would anyone want to be with someone who doesn't respect them either way? I hear men and women at work slagging their partners all the time, and I'm disturbed that people talk about the people they supposedly love in that sort of way.

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” --Audre Lorde

She obviously feels that making dinner is an important part of HER world and that the food she makes IS healthy. I would explain to her WHY you want to try eating some different food (maybe suggest a time period, like a month maybe?) and see if she would be willing to go for that. Or perhaps you guys could compromise on her cooking a couple meals as she wants too, a couple meals how you want too, and you cooking a couple meals. Or maybe you can eat what she cooks but ask her to serve any noodles, rice, sweet sauces, etc separately so that you can reduce them while you experiment with your food/weight issue.